Mrs P's Book of Secrets

by Lorna Gray

  Abruptly, I drew an unsteady breath. This was threatening to slide into an agonised description of a beautiful man’s final days, and I didn’t want that either. I bit down on the pitfall and stepped into another instead.

  I said, ‘I’m trying to say that somehow my experiences from that time are all muddled in my head like you were the one who hurt me. I think I’m angry with you because he was fiercely committed to me – and I to him – but I barely knew him and then he was gone. And while I’m still reeling and working very hard to pretend my feet are fixed upon solid ground, someone like you keeps asking me how I am.’

  I admitted, ‘I never really knew Archie. I had no time to become friends with him. In the six weeks before he went to sea, I barely even learned the names of his family. Sometimes I think love and friendship get turned the wrong way round. I think I fall in love very easily, but it feels as if it might take me a lifetime to truly get to know a person. And when it comes to you and the questions you ask …’

  I faltered and then gathered myself for the push onwards into revealing the last. I told him clearly, ‘It all belongs to friendship. And it’s magnetic, when I can’t bear to feel this sense of diving headlong. I don’t want to live this race again, as if becoming friends is an illusion that has to be overcome quickly in the narrow space before the world charges on.’

  I found that my blood felt thick and heavy.

  It was very hard to catch my breath. I suppose it came as a shock to me to admit something like that.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t look at him again. I said on a painfully humble note directed at the kerb sweeping away from my toe, ‘I’m sorry, Robert. I thought I should explain why I react so sharply whenever you make me tell you that I’m fine. And, besides, you did ask.’

  I think I must have still been experiencing the extreme of mood that had dogged my steps since that tumble on the stairs. I found I was focusing very fiercely upon some approaching headlights, feeling the handkerchief knot itself within the grip of my hand in a coat pocket, and wishing that I had never spoken at all.

  Then the bus came in. As we moved to board, I thought Robert and I were just going to pretend I hadn’t said anything in the past run of minutes. But then he paused with his foot on the step to tell me, ‘My sister’s name is Chloe and she lives in Leicester.’

  And I felt my pulse settle to a completely different rhythm, and it was like freedom.

  When we reached Moreton, he walked with me through the dark to the shop door and this time he stepped inside. I thought he was searching for something from his desk, but I saw the truth when he stepped out of his office empty-handed and it burst upon me with a sudden, unexpected laugh.

  I said, ‘You’ve known all day about my late night brush with a fleeing burglar, haven’t you? That’s why you were so stern this morning about the state of my hand.’

  Now he was assuring himself that no one was being shut in with me tonight.

  He conceded, ‘The doctor and I had a chat that was surprisingly frank.’

  I waited by my desk while Robert came out of his office and joined me in the angular light of my desk lamp. He was saying, ‘There was some truth in your observation that we might have been better off finding another way in place of buying that paper, wasn’t there? When it turns out you’ve been paying the price for our tomfoolery.’

  He said it grimly because the injury to my hand wasn’t a secret he liked. And in the process, he left me racing to calculate just how much he had really grasped about my recent run of encounters with Doctor Bates.

  I was hardly going to ask him about it. Instead I said, ‘If I tell you I’m fine, will you believe me?’

  ‘No.’

  Robert’s quick return made me laugh again.

  Then he said, ‘But while we’re skirting around the subject of that paper, might I ask a more personal question? Will you tell me about the plans you’ve inevitably been forming for your uncle’s rescue?’

  ‘My … plans?’ I was completely taken aback.

  ‘Yes. We could make time to discuss them now, if you like?’

  ‘Now? You mean here? Or over dinner, or something?’ Somehow I was flushing. This was happiness. His confidence in me was gloriously like a continuation of all that had been confided while we were waiting for the second bus, except that my mouth was already galloping into confessing, ‘I can’t, I’m sorry. I’ve promised to put on my best frock for an old school friend’s little evening party. She’s recently married and enjoying showing off her dinner service. Tonight she’s feeding her husband’s friends so I mustn’t let her down. Unless you’d like to come?’

  For a moment, willingness seemed the right feeling. Then the reality of what I had just said hit me hard.

  There was something excruciatingly complicated within that last question – too much like a contradiction of everything I had lately said about wishing that friendship might take a slower path.

  My offer to share my evening was nothing like his simple invitation to discuss my aunt and uncle.

  Nothing I did today would stay within normal bounds. Survival made me beat a retreat to the corner where the coatstand lurked. And yet I hadn’t lied just now when I had revealed the value I placed upon the idea of having his company tonight. I really hadn’t.

  All the same, I was making a business out of unravelling my scarf from about my neck, while every nerve in my body focused intensely upon the short distance I had created between us. The dark span of the office was practically humming with the memory of the wider space he had crossed earlier to take hold of me after my slip upon the stairs. It was like I was inviting him to revisit it.

  But he didn’t move. He didn’t even suggest tomorrow night for dinner instead.

  When he spoke, he only said gently, ‘It’s sweet that you would ask, but it probably isn’t the done thing to turn up unannounced to another person’s party. By the way, might I borrow this until the morning?’

  He showed me the copy of Jacqueline’s book he had carried all the while in his coat pocket.

  Then he finished by wishing me a good night and framed it around the smallest serious mention of my name.

  I didn’t know what he meant by that. Except that he left me alone with nothing but the usual creaking floorboards and the bewildering sense that in the midst of stumbling into offering up this new small part of myself, I must have finally taken the mistakes I’d made today one stage too far.

  Chapter 16

  It was hard to be at my desk by nine o’clock the next morning.

  The first minutes were an excruciating marathon of greetings where I tried, at the very least, to show that I was free of that horribly energetic excess of emotion once and for all. My uncle bustled by and then Robert stepped in with his collar turned up and his hat pressed down on his head. He met me as I was fiddling about with papers, braced for stiffness while I found out how deep the alienation ran, in him and in me.

  Robert removed his hat. He returned my greeting easily. Whatever mistakes had been made yesterday, the newfound friendship still stood.

  He made me brave enough to follow him as far as his office doorway as he went in to take off his coat. I stood there at the point where the light from his window met the heat from the glowing hearth, feeling faintly uncertain but trying hard to be bold, and asked him, ‘Have you been tampering with my advent calendar?’

  Larry, the boy who helped Mr Lock in the print room, had appeared by my desk at half past eight to ensure he got to open the next drawer. Besides the expected boiled sweet, Larry and I had discovered a neat little sprig of foliage nestling in the tray, which I vaguely took to be marjoram.

  Now Robert only moved me aside into the cramped space between the doorframe and a set of shelves so that he could hang his coat on the back of his door. As he reached for the hook, he asked, ‘Tampering? No. Is it a problem for you?’

  I shook my head. Dark wood was against my shoulder and behind my back. He was barely more than a foot away from me but
focused upon the task at hand.

  I told him, ‘Miss Prichard’s study of historical medical essays asserts that marjoram was used to promote a contented state of mind. With the rosemary and what I think was a very tiny piece of arrowroot, wouldn’t you say that whoever is leaving me these odd little presents is, at the very least, taking care to gift me the ingredients for a good health-giving drink?’

  His hand was setting his hat upon the hook as well. ‘Do you think so? Well, I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of it soon.’

  ‘By the twenty-fourth drawer, presumably.’

  My remark was a test that failed. Sarcasm didn’t quite have the same effect on him as it used to. This time it simply made him glance at me as he let his hand fall. Friendship really had established itself here. Comfort ran like warm silk between us when he returned to his desk.

  He took a moment to tidy some papers. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘Mr Lock claimed Jacqueline’s final edit off me as I came in this morning. I hope you don’t mind? And has your uncle had time to mention that he’s got the first of his notes of approval for the Willerson archive? No? It sounds as though we’re going to have another very busy day.’

  He looked up to catch the moment that I gave the smallest turn of my head towards the thin partition that separated his office from my uncle’s. This was the first reference Robert had made to yesterday. I could remember his comment on the serious challenge ahead of easing my uncle’s worries. I remembered too how Robert had denied my claim that his own commitment to this course was being driven by gratitude.

  I didn’t get to express my doubt a second time. We could both hear Uncle George moving about just beyond the panelled wall, preparing to bustle out to give us our instructions.

  I certainly didn’t get the chance to tell Robert that I had used Miss Prichard’s manuscript to look up the dried plants and seed-heads we’d noticed during yesterday’s visit to the Ashbrook memorial.

  I didn’t tell him that lavender bored the author since various ancient records had been so thoroughly reported in other histories. I didn’t manage to describe, either, the entry for forget-me-not, which wasn’t a true herb and could give patients a nasty case of liver damage. Teasels got a better mention because of the worm that dwelt in them and their documented use in medieval times as a remedy for fevers.

  I probably didn’t want to speak about any of that anyway, because then I would have been forced to admit that although my urge to read distress in every brief silence had very definitely faded with yesterday, the cure wasn’t complete. Even now, Harriet’s diphtheria-ridden death persisted in running like a subtle thread through almost every waking breath.

  It made me take the first opportunity to reach for the telephone for the sake of calling Jacqueline.

  I caught her just as she was about to go up to the house to issue new orders to her workmen. She had been putting it off because she was feeling overwhelmed by everything today.

  The voice by my ear was saying, ‘The list of repairs is barely shrinking, the workmen have uncovered a fault in one of the chimneys and the boys are supposed to finish school next weekend. I haven’t managed to get anything ready for them.’

  I heard the line crackle as if she were taking a moment to steady herself. Then she confessed, ‘I feel as if I’ve taken on an impossible project and it’s never going to come right. So what is it,’ she added bravely, ‘you need to tell me about the book?’

  She was clearly hoping for good news, but bracing to hear bad. She made me feel terribly guilty when I had to say, ‘I’m really sorry, but I’m not actually calling about the book at all. I wanted to ask what else you knew about Harriet. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.’

  She showed how unhappy she was by leaving me an awful lot of room in which to ask a few minor questions. But then, all of a sudden, I heard her take a funny little breath before she broke in to say, ‘Oh God. I’ve got to tell you that you needn’t apologise for wanting to know more about that girl’s origins. It isn’t really the repairs to the house that are bothering me. The workmen are fine. I’m really cut up about this nasty little secret to do with Walter’s treatment of his niece. It’s awful, isn’t it? And I did so need this place to be wholesome.’

  Now I really heard a tremor in her voice. She admitted, ‘Lucy, I think I must be like Graham Hanley Ashbrook. I’ve retired from a busy life and made the job of writing about those giraffes my distraction, my cure.’

  It was the way she phrased that remark that startled me.

  It was too precise. Now I asked carefully, ‘The giraffes are your cure?’

  ‘I had blood poisoning about three years ago. It started with a small insect bite on my hand.’

  ‘Good heavens.’

  It struck me with a sharp little tightening of sympathy that I had spent an awful lot of time at that house worrying about its effect upon me. I really ought to have been paying more attention to its affect upon everyone else.

  She was saying, ‘That’s the least of it. The doctors treated the infection with M&B, as they would if you have the money to cover the expense. And you know how they say that you have to have a high chance of dying from the infection before they’ll risk the chance of killing you with the treatment. I can only say that I really hope the new penicillin will be better. Antibacterial drugs are not nice.’ She said it dismissively, angrily.

  ‘No wonder,’ I observed, ‘you’ve been feeling an affinity with Graham Hanley Ashbrook.’

  ‘Because we’re both obsessive about dangerous diseases, you mean?’

  I heard the breath of a humourless laugh.

  ‘Do you know,’ she added, ‘that when I first moved here and discovered his account of his giraffes, it felt like starting afresh. I’ve been living on tenterhooks for the past few years, waiting to see if my body had managed to pick itself up from the ruins. It even overshadowed the usual worry about whether every fresh midge bite was going to set it all off again.’

  ‘I can imagine it would.’

  ‘So when I discovered Graham’s story, it felt as if he had been waiting for me. It seemed meant. And writing this book for his memory was like a friendly wave from a patient who only survived unscathed thanks to the ground laid by many generations of old doctors like him.’

  ‘Oh, Jacqueline.’

  She told me, ‘We bought the Ashbrook house as a place for my recuperation. And that’s what I’m doing while I oversee the restoration. This book was supposed to be my personal contribution to the process.’

  She drew a breath before plunging on. ‘Only, all of a sudden I’ve uncovered this wretched bit of family cruelty, and it’s infectious. Walter’s meanness has worked its way into every corner of my mind. He’s making me aware of the uselessness of my expensive little book – because who’s going to read it really? And what good is it going to do?’

  I had my hand up to my forehead. It was the one that had sported a bandage yesterday. Today the hand was just a little stiff and the bruise was a mildly interesting colour. It made it seem as if I had exaggerated the entire thing.

  I dropped my hand and said rapidly, ‘But the book’s nearly done now, isn’t it? It went down to the print room today. And it’s wonderful and I love what you’ve written. Besides, the book mainly focuses upon Graham and his giraffes, doesn’t it? Walter is just a footnote to their story.’

  ‘Where the brute deserves to be, you mean? Sweet of you.’

  I heard the steel in her voice when she added, ‘But let’s not mislead ourselves. The wretched man’s claim on his father’s house is everywhere. It’s on that girl and those giraffes, and it’s on me now. He’s made me think that I don’t even want to see the finished books.’

  She hesitated, then said in a rush, ‘I was in half a mind today to call you and tell you to pulp the lot, when you called me and saved me the job. Can you do that? Cancel the order, I mean?’

  I said after a moment, ‘I can. I could run down to the print room and ask Mr Lock to stop.�
�

  ‘But I’ve practically paid for them, haven’t I? I wouldn’t get a refund?’

  I felt my mind stiffen. It’s what it always did whenever I found myself abruptly lurching from friendly concern into a debate about the money, even when it was being led by authors who were thoroughly keen. I always ended up feeling as if we were somehow running a fraud.

  I told her in a considerably more businesslike manner, ‘You’ve just got the balance to settle, yes. It’s technically payable on receipt of the books, but we only do it that way for clarity. If we were anyone else, we’d expect payment in full before commencement of work.’

  ‘Really?’ she asked dispassionately, while I tried to avoid thinking too deeply about my uncle’s likely panic if the job were to be cancelled. This was why he always insisted upon a sizeable deposit. This was why we ensured the basic cost of materials was covered from the outset. Now, if the job failed, we’d only lose the value of Robert’s time and mine.

  Then Jacqueline was adding, ‘Of course, I’ve also got to think about the fact that I’ve been asked to give the address to the Historical Society.’

  ‘You’re delivering a speech?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? That’s why the turnaround is so tight. That, and the fact I wanted to give the books as presents. Did you think it was for the hotel launch? When that great rotten pile clearly isn’t going to be finished for months?’ She laughed. ‘No. I’m the guest speaker at the Historical Society Christmas Dinner. It marks the start of their centenary year, so I can tell you it’s quite a coup. Harold Winterbourne was their speaker last year. He wrote Battleship Grey; have you read it?’

  Needless to say, I hadn’t.

  She was racing on anyway. ‘Do you know,’ she said with renewed energy, ‘I’m feeling a little better about it all. I’m so glad you called. Would you tell me …? Will you tell me what you would do if you were in my position?’